Patent 7903682 was granted and assigned to Juniper Networks on March, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Scheduling virtual upstream channels within one physical upstream channel is disclosed. The MAP messages of the virtual upstream channels that share the same physical upstream channel are synchronized together such that any one transmission opportunity for a given virtual upstream channel does not overlap with transmission opportunities of any other virtual channel. This includes converting all requests for transmission opportunities into a common unit and then scheduling these requests as appropriate.